


Pocket Knife

by rosesandbrine



Category: Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesandbrine/pseuds/rosesandbrine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young woman from West Virginia becomes a DC police officer, too unlucky for the FBI and never forgets a knife. Instead of becoming a psychologist, a surgeon becomes an artist and meets her before the veil is lifted.  But some things remain painfully the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pocket Knife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ferreuscelo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferreuscelo/gifts).



It’s an alien language; they call it art.

Colors and shapes and textures don’t necessarily look like blobs to the young DC police officer, but most times she doesn’t get it. It frustrates her as she walks in the gallery, half drifting away from her date. Nobel doesn’t know much either about art, and it all reeks of desperation, trying to keep her attention away from her job in something neither have a common ground in. No opportunity to learn and grow a bond.

It’s a waste of time, a waste of money. It’s one of the most exclusive exhibition openings in the DC Metro area and they’re like preschoolers wandering around and not comprehending what they see. Nobel, he who plays with bugs, refuses to budge into the main galleria with her. So she enters alone.

The works are inspired by [Honore Fragonard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_Fragonard), it is said. Bodies taken from hospitals, they say, from all over the world. Different parts hobbled together after being dried out. Statues of a life ended through disease or trauma reliving once more.

The upper crust audience is in _love_ , they speak words she understands and yet finds very fake. She stands alone despite swarming crowd that leaves her antsy and nervous. She doesn’t have a gun strapped on - it makes Nobel _nervous_ \- but the Swiss Army pocket knife hidden in her garters and under her [dress](http://www.feeluxury.com/Red-Contrast-Black-Long-Sleeve-Bodycon-Dress-product-148822.html) is calming.

There is something heart breakingly lovely about the mummified statutes. And she is so, so relieved none are children. One captures her attention; an old man. Old and stern, naked and posed as defiant to the end.

"Looks like you could of had a few more years." She murmurs to the statue, her trigger finger resting on plump lower lip.

"Indeed," A voice behind her murmurs; like soft like smoke and rich like wine, "Cancer patients in theory often do, though his body isn’t entirely his alone."

She turns, a sharp looking man with eyes like glittering rubies stares at the statue with a sense of familiarity and pride. He’s handsome, dressed boldly, elegantly, like the artist that he is. She assumes he’s the artist, she assumes because the quick scan of the statue’s plaque notes nothing of how it died. Or how many bodies are being used for this piece.

"Don’t suppose you knew him in life?" She asks, arms fold nearly under her breasts, head tilts. She reminds herself of Nobel but the brief smile of sharp crooked teeth the artist gives her makes her forget.

"No," He replies, closing the distance between them. His arm brushes against hers, too slight to apologize for but she feels it was on purpose, "I did not have the pleasure of knowing him in life; I only knew him from my work and reports sent to me regarding his… _their_ deaths. Though I’ve seen many men like they, in my former life.”

Her eyes flicker to his face, strong chiseled nose, sensual lips and fine profile. Twice her age at most, twenty years older at _least_. “Kinda morbid.”

Lips smirk before they smile, “Oh, but art is _always_ morbid. It’s man’s attempt at immortality; though it has become the artist’s immortality.” He turns, maroon eyes regard her. “You know very little of art, don’t you?”

"No time for it and no one to teach me," She admits, tongue clicking against teeth, eyes on the glass stare of the statute. Oh, but the artist’s eyes are on _her_. "Sort of a pickle, don’tcha think?"

"If given the time and chance for lessons, would you take them?"

A warning buzzes in her body. She faintly wonders if her dead Daddy felt that way before leaving his truck to get shot in the face. She remembers Daddy’s hat. Remembers how it got her here, too poor to go any further without hard work. Too young for the FBI.

“Gladly.” She says to his question, voice soft and accent sweet and thick.

Like her Daddy, she doesn’t listen to that buzz. At the least, she has the good sense to go home with Nobel.

She has the bad sense to go out for drinks the next night with the surgeon turned artist; his lessons turning into hot kisses and demanding hands only to resume with words after bodies cool in his bed. Sensual lips whispering names and science into the shell of her ear, hands ghosting over skin. He notices the pocket knife but that’s involved with play, snipping of bra and well worn panties and forgotten on the dresser.

He eventually forgets the knife.

Days become weeks, becoming months. He feeds her breakfast, he feeds her desert. He paints her and paints on her. He makes her scream, he makes her furious, he makes her think. He makes her _everything_.

Until she opens **that** door. Until she discovers far too many things that make her cry; that make her vomit; his studio is littered with bodies he has killed, that he has honored into art, whose remains that he has fed to her. She is the one who arrests the artist that became her lover; his wrists bound before he would wake. She tries to avoid the whirlwind that catches them, that takes him to trial, that ruins her chances for the FBI, that makes her heart and body ache for him.

But she never forgets her pocket knife. Not even five years later, not even rumor of him seducing a young FBI agent who allows his lover to escape to reaches her ears. She only keeps it close.

She doesn’t forget her pocket knife, _ever_. Even as it sinks into his throat, his fingers wrapped around her neck and leaving bruises to match her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it is Clarice and Hannibal. I didn't mention their names because I was trying to keep them IC despite the AU. My test for myself was to recongize the characters as who they were despite the names. While mainly based on the book, little hints of the TV show snuck in. The era of the story, Hannibal's appearance, Will's faint cameo at the end.


End file.
